Current Affairs
The Dangers of Appeasement: How Not to Negotiate with Monsters
In 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain took a trip to Germany, had a nice chat with Adolf Hitler, and returned waving a piece of paper that he confidently declared had secured “peace for our time.” The Munich Agreement handed Hitler the Sudetenland. The theory if you give a dictator a slice of territory, he will be perfectly content and not want the rest of the continent. Less than a year later, Hitler invaded Poland, and ...
Forced Exodus: The Illusion of Peace Through Destruction
Imagine Losing Your Home How would you feel if one day you woke up to find that your home had been bombed to rubble, and you were then told to pack up your life and move to another country? Not a relocation for a fresh start, but a forced exile imposed by the very nation that reduced your home to dust. Imagine being bombed out of Britain and being told to move to France, who, despite saying they haven’t the room, have been told to take you ...
Press F to Pay Respects: The Death of the Phone Call
Once upon a time—by which I mean about 10 years ago—if you wanted to speak to someone, you would pick up the phone and actually call them. Radical, I know. But somewhere between the rise of WhatsApp, Messenger, and text messages, we collectively decided that hearing another human voice was an outrageous inconvenience, and now the humble phone call is about as popular as dial-up internet and non-ironic landlines. It is not that messaging ...
Why Do We Give Foreign Aid?
Foreign aid. That thing angry people love to whinge about whenever the government dares to spend a penny outside our borders. “Why are we giving money to other countries when we have problems here?” they cry, usually while misunderstanding both the numbers and the entire point. So, let’s break it down, shall we? It’s Not Just Charity – It’s Self-Interest Yes, it’s lovely to help people in need, but foreign aid isn’t ...
Dunning-Kruger Effect: When Ignorance Becomes a Superpower
In today’s topsy-turvy, fucked up world, the Dunning-Kruger effect—a cognitive bias where the less one knows, the more one believes they know—has become the unlikely hero of our socio-political narrative. It’s as if the world has collectively decided that ignorance is indeed bliss, and who needs experts when we’ve got impulsive gut feelings? Right-wing populism has surged, fuelled by a disdain for experts and a love for “common ...